The present invention relates to machinery, and, more particularly, to machinery for automatically installing various machine components, such as bearings, into a casting, housing, or the like during an assembly process.
Various types of machines have been developed for the automatic installation of machine components, such as bearings, into a component accepting bore in a casting, housing, or like part. For example, in the manufacture of small compressors, a machine casting is provided with bearing-accepting bores into which bearings are press fitted. While installation of the bearing can be effected manually, various types of component loading and pressing devices have been developed. It is known, for example, to maintain a supply of stacked bearings in a hopper and to use a linearly reciprocatable slide to push or `strip out` the lowermost bearing from the stack and move the stripped out bearing to a position where it can be inserted into its bore by a press. While machines of this type are generally suited for their intended function, such installation devices are typically designed to accommodate the dimensions of a specific component and, accordingly, are best suited to high volume production situations where change-over from one sized component to another is not required. Thus prior devices are generally not suited to low or medium volume production runs or situations where differently sized components must be installed, since their initial design and fabrication costs cannot be justified. In addition, prior devices are oftentime relatively large, making them difficult to integrate into flexible machine systems where compact machining and assembly stations are a desirable feature.